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Despite the motion picture industry's repeated assertion that he was born in Dresden, an "error" that amused him into his 90s, Siodmak was nevertheless born Kurt Siodmak in Podgorze, Kraków's Jewish quarter, the son of Rosa Philippine (née Blum) and Ignatz Siodmak, a devout Hasidic scholar.[2] His parents were both from Ashkenazi Jewish families in Leipzig (parents' birthplace needs to be checked against Siodmak's autobiography). Siodmak rejected his ultra-orthodox upbringing, and as a young man, abruptly one day walked out of Podgorze, removed his kippah and tallit, and entered a restaurant in Kraków to eat pork. Siodmak then went to Germany and acquired a degree in mathematics before beginning to write novels. He invested early royalties earned by his first books in the movie Menschen am Sonntag (1929) a documentary-style chronicle of the lives of four Berliners on a Sunday based on their own lives. The movie was co-directed by Curt Siodmak's older brother Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer, with a script by Billy Wilder in collaboration with Fred Zinneman and cameramanEugen Schüfftan.[1] Siodmak was the cousin of noted film producer Seymour Nebenzal, who funded Menschen am Sonntag with funds borrowed from his father, Heinrich Nebenzahl.

In the following years Siodmak wrote many novels, screenplays, and short stories including the novel F.P.1 Antwortet Nicht (F.P.1 Doesn't Answer) (1932) which became a popular movie starring Hans Albers and Peter Lorre.

Siodmak decided to emigrate after hearing an anti-Semitic tirade by the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and departed for England where he made a living as a screenwriter before moving to the United States in 1937. His big break came with the screenplay for The Wolf Man (1941), starring Lon Chaney, Jr., which established this fictional creature as the most popular movie monster after Dracula and Frankenstein's monster.[1] In the film, Siodmak created several werewolf "legends": being marked by a pentagram; being practically immortal apart from being struck/shot by silver implements/bullets; and the famous verse:

Even a man who is pure in heart,And says his prayers by nightMay become a Wolf when the Wolfbane bloomsAnd the autumn Moon is bright

(The last line was changed in the sequels to "And the Moon is full and bright".)